Therein lies the problem - poor kids and minorities are held to a lower standard for testing, hence removing the entire point of these tests - standardization.
On any measure of academic ability, on average, the poor and minorities (with the exception of Asians and Jews) score poorer. What this suggests is that on average, they are less academically competent. Believe it or not, Khan Academy, books and expensive prep classes can only help so much - if a kid goes to an inner city school or a dilapidated schoolhouse in Appalachia, they are bound to have a lower quality of education. That will translate into testing, because prep materials cannot alone teach the various skills tested. It can be difficult, unless done consistently in class, to improve skills like reading comprehension and certain mathematical techniques.
In sum, sure the testing is objective, I’m not disputing that. However, as long as there is a large group of people who want racially equal results, and another group that wants standardization, you’ll never reach a consensus.
But then, if the academic measures are lower for certain ethnic/income groups, then they are less prepared for college level education, which is what the SAT purports to measure. Who do you want building the bridge or designing airplanes…the 700 math SAT or the 500?
I think that the government should hire a strong social media programmer like mark zuckerberg to create a round the clock online learning community that would aim to provide the poor and minority students a structured study plan and encouragement and motivation that wealthier children benefit from.
For example set a group of poor 4th grade African American boys a goal of reading one story book a week but create an online book club where once a week they just log on and then talk about what they read with other kids their age plus an older leader who is trained to challenge their comprehension and critical thinking skills.
High school in Texas is hell, rank is king, and it’s a dog eat dog world in high school. Kids are having to take 3 APs in freshman year, and up to 5 or 6 in sophomore year just because AP classes are on weighted 6.0 scales and ranks are on a weighted scale.
Everyone in the top 10% cheats in some way or form, hell our entire district has a reputation of cheating.
The amount of pressure put on kids is absolutely insane. And this is just to get into UT Austin.
Grades are so inflated due to the broken school system and college admission officers won’t recognize the difference.
I’m a sophomore in high school in TX, and I don’t rlly want to take 4 APs, but to just be in the middle of the pack, I have to. I am no means a great student.
@NoPlay that is so interesting and unfortunate. You are absolutely right for feeling that there is too much pressure on you and I totally understand why you feel like you have to keep up. Ugh. I feel so bad for you guys.
I’m not sure what the answer is. There seems to be more of a shift towards GPA counting more now than SAT/ACT and maybe we have opened a new can of worms.
I am in NJ and I do college advising and we have similar issues but they are not as bad as what you are describing in Texas. We have some schools, the better schools in the state, that have not given in to the pressure of grade inflation. If the schools ranked, this wouldn’t be a big deal. But many of them do NOT rank so the problem is that these kids in the better schools are competing with kids from similar socioeconomic backgrounds that have better grades because their schools have grade inflation. Make sense? So I have some students that will do worse in the college admissions process because their school is tough on grading.
I wonder if this new mess will start to make standardized testing more important. Backing out the problem of access to tutors and better educational systems based on wealth (which is a huge thing to back out, of course!), in the end it might be a more fair way to evaluate students.
How does UT Austin use test scores? Is that a factor at all in who gets in from the state? What if you are top 20% but you have a 34 or 35 on your ACT and most of the top 10% doesn’t? Does that help at all.
Any idea how the rules are different for out of staters?
@collegemomjam I’m in your state - and thank you for addressing this! Yes, our HS is one of those that deflates grades more than inflates. I’ve tried to explain to our college counselors that our kids look worse in college admissions (and for merit scholarships that are based primarily on GPA and test scores), due to this grade deflation.
Plus, there are many kids taking lower level classes and getting higher grades, and ending up with higher class rank. Then some scholarships, you must be Top 10% of the class by rank. That makes no sense. Don’t the colleges understand this?
Texas I think has one of the worst, if not THE worst cases of pressure on students. The whole auto admit if in top 10% is hilariously stupid. I’m in one of the most competitive high schools in the state and 50% of the high school are Asians and Indians(I am one as well). The cut off for top 10 percent this year is 5.42. That’s how hard it is. You’d have to take 10-15 AP classes at the end of first semester of senior year.
I could go to some trash town and high and get ranked top 6% easy and get into UT Austin. That’s how unfair the system is.The people in less competitive districts are getting the big end of the stick
UT Austin is the only public school that is able to lower the top 10% rule. This year they’ve lowered it to 6% thankfully, so more people who aren’t ranked can get in. However, schools like Texas A&M, Baylor, still have top 10%…
The way UT Austin works is this. Screw your ECS, screw your SAT/ACT score, if you’re ranked 6% you’re in.
The fact that admission officers don’t take account of competitiveness is just another aspect of a broken system. I told my younger brother he has to take the CBE and get into Algebra 2 or Calc AB by freshman yr(he’s a 6th grader now) because the GPA inflation would be so high by then.
Thanks for expressing concern. I think the Texas legislature should revoke the 10% auto admit as fast as possible because it’s turning high school into a hell-hole at the start of freshman year
Yeah…it’s a no-brainer that it’s easier to be Top 10% at a lower-rated HS than at a higher-rated HS.
I also think a 6.0 scale is ridiculous and just inflates grades. It must be confusing to colleges when some HS are on 6.0 scale, some 5.0, some 4.3, some 4.0; some weight, some don’t, etc.
I will never understand a school that has more than one val. The SAT, AP and GPA should be close to represent an average. This is just my opinion. As far as taking easy classes for the A, I think that is why I support weighted grades. Not all classes are equal.
Right but weighted grades are different everywhere. 6.0 at some schools; but 4.3 is highest at others.
If students took advanced classes because they want the challenge in the areas they are interested in, then colleges would see the students without that GPA-grubbing incentive. Perhaps schools could use a “Rigor Rater” such as a footnote on transcript (just an idea):
What level of rigor did this student take:
1- Honors/AP level courses in every subject
2- Honors/AP levels courses in 2-3 core academic subjects
3 - Just a few Honors/AP classes
4 - No Honors/AP but all college-bound level academic courses
5 - Half or more basic skills classes
FYI, some of the top prep schools in the US do not weight grades. But, all students there had to meet high admission standards.
UT lowered its auto admit requirement because of population growth. It’s just getting more competitive, and isn’t leaving more room for holistic admits.
In any event, UT isn’t the end all be all. It’s an excellent school but there are other great options in Texas. High school shouldn’t feel like a hell hole. It didn’t for my D and she went to a competitive high school. Choose to play the game or don’t. No need to kill yourself trying to gain top rank if you get stressed out by the workload.
So many great points have been raised on this thread and I wish there was a solution to them all.
As for the situation in Texas and other states that have the automatic admission to the top X% kids at their respective high schools, I think they created a bigger problem by doing this. While I do think that a student in a lower socio-economic school system should be cut a little slack for not having the same opportunities as a student from the more affluent communities (and therefore only compared to the students in their school), they certainly have to figure out a way to not shun these top kids that want a fair chance of admission at their state’s flagship, which might be their dream school.
@NoPlay so if you aren’t top 6% do you at least still have a shot at an unreserved spot at UT where they will take into consideration your scores, EC’s and just the overall competitiveness of your high school?
@sunnyschool I feel like in NJ, because we are a small state, some of the colleges do recognize the kids that are coming from the more competitive schools…for example, Millburn HS. However, I do still think that it’s a little harder for these kids even with that extra consideration because so many of the kids are competing for spots at the same schools and the colleges in the end might have to rely more on the objective measurements of GPA to differentiate…I think this is definitely the case for the local schools like Lehigh and Bucknell that are strong…and then of course there are the Ivies, the small LAC’s (which can be harder than the Ivies), Georgetown, Tufts, Hopkins, basically all of the top schools in the north east because so many top kids are trying to get into these same schools. They can’t accept so many kids from the same high schools…they may accept more kids from the top high schools, but they still probably can’t take everyone that has the stats. This is unfortunate and makes me feel bad for these hard workers that may not end up at one of their top choices (and in my opinion, this justifies having a long list of schools so that you can increase your chances of getting in the type of school you are hoping for!).
This is a very difficult problem to solve as they try to be as fair as possible to all of the parties involved.
A few years ago a good friend of mine who lives in one of these top school districts in NJ told me that her daughter’s guidance counselor told her that that particular year they had something like 100 kids apply to Northeastern. Many kids applied as their “safety” or more likely school. They got CLOBBERED that year by Northeastern. So many kids that didn’t get in were shocked. (Northeastern has been on the rise, with good reason, but it was still a shocker and an acceptance no one should ever take fro granted!).
Im sorry but I do not believe that one standardized test should label a student. If you got a bad SAT score that does not mean that you are not a smart individual. The problem now a days is that students are not being taught the curriculum according to SAT standards. That is why smart and brilliant students are not doing so well on their SATs.
@ekdad212 class rank only compares students within a learning environment. It does nothing to compare students in different learning environments. For example, the top 25% of DS16’s class all had ACT/SAT scores in the top 5% of test takers nationwide. The kid that was 25th in his class would have been higher ranked in the class behind them simply because the class overall had a lower average GPA.
I see this problem at my high school. Tons of students in my class have a 4.0 unweighted GPA, and they’re also in the most advanced classes at my school. I know the problem with this is cheating (ha). We have block scheduling, so if one class takes the test one day, and the other class the next, they’re able to communicate about the test (the teachers aren’t changing tests for different classes ??). In some classes, students have their lunch halfway through class; therefore, allowing cheating at lunch. I’ve witnessed kids blatantly using their phones, etc. I lost my 4.0 this year because I didn’t cheat my way through ap calc. Most of everyone else did, and it’s kind of a bummer that they get a higher grade that they don’t deserve. I didn’t deserve an A in calc (had no idea what I was doing), but I also didn’t deserve to be subjected to curves of tests that tons of people cheated on. However, I did better than all of them on the SAT (lol), I only got a 1400 but it’s still an achievement for me. They were upset about their scores (probably 97% not cracking even 1300), and I didn’t know how to tell them it was their own fault. Along with grade inflation, cheating is a huge problem which leads to higher GPAs and lower SAT scores.
